When not to listen to your users, from Livejournal
While it’s important to listen and respond to user feedback, it’s often a mistake to treat arbitrary or isolated instances as a roadmap for enhancements. This post about lessons from Livejournal reinforces this. The idea is not new (see Jakob Nielsen, for example), but it’s useful to be reminded from time to time. Users are [...]
Ruby’s Kernel#rand for random numbers within an interval
As part of some Ruby-Processing work I’m doing, I needed a random number within a specified range. Processing has its own random function, but I wanted to use Ruby. I needed a random number in the interval (-range, range). I immediately thought, “specify the max value range*2 as a param to rand, and then subtract [...]
Thomas Keller’s Midnight Snack
I keep forgetting where this is. It’s Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, Bouchon, and Per Se. The voice-over inflates the sandwich (world’s greatest?), but it does look mighty tasty.
Body Navigation – Play Pong, get Fit!
I’m a big fan of Processing, and who can complain about a project involving dancers, a choreographer, and a programmer? I love the pong part. I gotta defrost my projector sometime and see what I can do with it. Body Navigation by Recoil Performance Group from ole kristensen on Vimeo.
That’s not XTC! iTunes Store Feature Suggestion
I use the iTunes Store as a way to find and preview music, and I’ve purchased quite a bit of music and TV shows through it. I’ve seen several cases where music has been mis-labeled or mis-categorized. For example, the last two albums on this page for the UK band XTC: I’m not the only [...]
Batch Compiling with Aquamacs Emacs
I needed to batch compile some files recently, and I had to lookup how to do this with Aquamacs. It’s pretty simple. If Aquamacs is at /Applications/Aquamacs, then this will work: /Applications/Aquamacs\ Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs\ Emacs -nw -batch -f batch-byte-compile /path/to/elisp-file.el
Confusion Over Triple Equals (===)
Doesn’t everyone have concepts that they can’t keep organized in their heads? I frequently get values for certain keys mixed up in my head, especially ones that I don’t use very often. At the Lone Star Ruby Conference, Greg and I were talking about the triple equals operator in Ruby recently (===), and I confused my notion [...]
Emacs Lisp – Block Commenting Ruby Code
These days I’m working to become proficient in Emacs (I’ve recently switched from Vim, as Greg mentioned on his blog). With that comes all kinds of things like org-mode, yasnippet, and lots of keyboard combinations. A part of this current effort I’m learning Emacs Lisp right now. There’s probably a better way to do block comment [...]
Bomomo for a bit of fun
If you’re in need of some doodling, try out Bomomo. I like the mass transit map feel that some of the drawing tools have. And you can save your drawings too.
A Little Cluetrain Reminder
I was in a local Target the other day and I saw this improvised product review: Isn’t it fairly clear that the Cluetrain people have a point? People are going to talk about your products, your company, your reputation. Corporations can’t stop that, and technology further empowers these kinds of exchanges. Corporations should work to [...]